Rainbow cross lights the way for all

Reclaiming the cross is the theme of the following prayer from a spectacular Easter Eve service where rainbow lights were projected onto the 103-foot cross at Mt. Davidson, San Francisco’s highest point.

Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco sponsored the cross-lighting worship services there from 1997-99. Longtime MCC-SF member Lynn Jordan still remembers how poignant it was for the LGBT community to reclaim the cross at that time, when the AIDS death toll was finally being reduced by new drugs introduced in 1997. Thank you, Lynn, for providing the prayer and photos from the MCC-SF archives.

Litany for Lighting the Cross

By Rev. Karen Foster and MCC-SF staff

On this Easter Eve we gather to commemorate the suffering and crucifixion of the Holy One, and to celebrate the rising of new life and

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

There are those who would tell us that we have no place in the realm of God and the cross is not ours, but we hear God’s voice calling us for us and

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

We call upon those preaching a rhetoric of hate to stop the violence, and tonight for all who have been battered, rejected, and alienated by churches and in the name of religion

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

We have died many deaths and we have lived in many tombs, but deaths could not hold us down and this night

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

Bringing our bright and beautiful selves like the colors of the rainbow, different as we are, we come together as one, and

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

We pray for the day when in freedom and in peace, people of all ages, all races, all nationalities, and all sexual orientations will stand together and proclaim

We light the cross as a sign of hope for all people.

___

The prayer and picture come from the bulletin for the third annual Mount Davidson Easter Eve Service, held by MCC-SF on April 3, 1999.

Rainbow lights bathe the cross at the 1999 Easter Eve service at San Francisco’s Mt. Davidson. This vivid photo was reproduced on postcards sold by Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco.